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Updated February 1, 2024

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Family name origins & meanings

  • Scottish : habitational name for someone from the French city of Bordeaux, from a reduced form of the Old French adjective bordelais.
  • Iranian : from the Persian personal name or epithet barlas ‘brave man of noble stock’, from Mongolian barlas ‘brave’, the name of the Mongolian tribe of which Tamerlane’s father was a member.
  • Greek : perhaps a nickname from Aroumin (a language related to Romanian, spoken in Greece) bărliv ‘tormented’, ‘long-suffering’, from Bulgarian bŭlivŭ ‘ill’.

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